Fic: Home - Chapter Three, General (GG)
Jun. 16th, 2003 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rubykatewritingTITLE: Home
AUTHOR:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rubykatewriting
PAIRING: This fic features Lorelai and Luke in an established relationship with children; Sookie and Jackson are still doing what they're doing; and Jess is a widower; it will eventually end up Rory/Jess.
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Now he can’t imagine calling any other place home. Jess returns to Stars Hollow.
DISCLAIMER: Luke Danes, Lorelai Gilmore, Jess Mariano, Sookie St. James, Jackson Belleville, Emily and Richard Gilmore and Rory Gilmore belong to others. I am only borrowing them. No harm intended.
WARNING: Major character death pre-fic, which is discussed and dealt with through remainder of fic.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Multiple chapters.
Sookie leans closer to Lorelai. "Please tell me you're as weirded out as I am that Jess has a child just two years younger than mine," she whispers, her gaze locked on the two men.
"Been there since yesterday," Lorelai replies out of the side of her mouth. They watch Luke and Jess as the two men work in near silence on the back porch. They are trying to put together Emma's new bicycle, which has been sitting in a box since her birthday last month. (She didn't want it put together until she learned to ride without training wheels.) Neither one of them gave the directions a glance. They unloaded the box of all its various bicycle parts, stood side-by-side, eyeing the pile for several minutes, then set to work.
Emma sits on one of the kitchen table's chairs, holding her doll in a vise- grip of anticipation, and watches the action, smack in the middle of the doorway. Every once in awhile, when one of the men lets out a choice phrase or word, her eyes grow big and round and she lets out a giggle of appreciation.
Jackson comes rambling in from the front of the house, paper bags full-to- bursting with fresh fruits and vegetables, already telling Sookie about his new crop of something-or-other. He sets the bags down on the kitchen table and Sookie immediately begins unloading them. It's already one o'clock and she doesn't have the chickens in the oven yet. If the kids are going to eat before they go out trick-or-treating, she needs to get moving.
"Jackson, is there anything else in the truck?" Sookie asks, checking each item against the list in her head. Her head pops up from one of the bags, her stomach twisting, and a line forms between her eyebrows as she looks at him. "Where is the squash?"
He straightens at the tone of her voice - normal rising to high right at the end. Trouble is brewing. "They're in there," Jackson replies desperately, pointing at the other bag.
Sookie goes to the other bag, pulling out tomatoes and apples. "No squash. And who put the apples in with the tomatoes?! Hello, people, bruises!" She looks at Jackson like he just kicked her puppy.
He gives her a helpless expression, shoulders raised up. "I wasn't paying attention while the guy bagged. He's new. And I swear I had the squashes in my hand. Hold on, maybe they're out in the truck." He is already halfway to the front door. "They might have fallen out when I took that last turn."
She is fast on his heels. "Jackson, how fast were you driving?" she demands.
Chuckling to herself, Lorelai heads to the living room in search of her son. Will is on the couch, channel surfing, his usual sullen expression in place. He has barely spoken since last night's dinner at her mom's. Emily was in a snit because the maid messed up dinner. When Luke tried to prepare something new, she burst into tears. It was Richard's favorite meal. She wanted it to be perfect. Will watched all of it with his quiet brown eyes, looking up through his messy crop of dark hair. Lorelai sits down beside him and slides an arm around his narrow shoulders. "Hey, kiddo."
"Hey, Mom." He doesn't look away from the TV.
"How about you go outside and see what your cousin Wren is up to?" she suggests.
With a woe-is-me sigh, he reluctantly unfolds his skinny frame from the thick cushions and stands up. His jeans are getting too short again; the hem is barely grazing the top of his sneakers. He walks across the living room to the front door and slips outside, his feet dragging along the wood floor. He knows she hates that.
She sits on the couch, lost in thought. Will may look like Luke, but he has her moody streak. Luke comes into the living room and plops down on the couch beside her, opening a bottle of water. She swings her legs up onto his lap and lies down, resting her head on the armrest. He takes several chugs before he asks, "So?"
Lorelai rolls her eyes in exasperation. "Now I understand when my mom used to tell me I would reap the rewards of my own behavior through my children, three-fold. Or something like that." She lets out a pent-up breath, feeling useless, and covers her face with her arm, her voice muffled. "He won't talk about it. He's said a total of ten words in the past twenty-four hours. I've counted." She looks at him from under her arm. "What are you doing in here? Did you finish Emma's bike?"
"As if your daughter would let us back in the house if we hadn't," he tells her. On cue, Emma taps on the window, sitting on her bike, and waves wildly. Lorelai and Luke wave back. She disappears from view and Luke turns to his wife and studies her in silence. "So what did Mrs. Abernathy have to say?"
"She says he's getting worse. He's keeping his grades up like we told him, but he basically sits in class and reads. No class participation, no interaction with his classmates, even the kids he used to be buddies with." She scoots up into a sitting position, bringing her knees to her chest. "Part of me understands he's still upset about Dad. But it doesn't make it any easier to accept that he's basically throwing away everything he used to love. And he won't talk to me anymore."
Luke smiles, tugging her feet into his lap. "Which is killing you."
"Of course!"
"Babe, it's not just you. It's not just me. It's everyone, including his sisters. He's pissed off at the world and he's taking a page out of his cousin's book. Rebelling. However, as you said, he is keeping his grades up, and he's eating. He can't stay out late or drive yet so let's give him some breathing room."
Lorelai opens her mouth to argue, but Luke stops her. "Babe, he's getting to that age. He's asserting his independence and all that crap. This is probably normal."
"That is so like you to argue rationally with me!" She groans, giving up. "And he's my son. He always promised to remain as un-normal as possible."
Luke scoffs. "I know. I know."
"Hey, Luke?" Sookie calls from the kitchen. "Where did you put the baster? You've moved it!" She sounds incredulous.
Raising his eyebrows suggestively, Luke grins and Lorelai proudly tells him how devious he's become under her expert tutelage. "I can't let her get too cocky in my kitchen," he replies, getting up from the couch, and Lorelai is reminded how much Will moves like him. "You coming?" he asks over his shoulder.
She shakes her head and stands, stretching her back. "You know I've been ordered out of the kitchen since the Christmas '06 fiasco."
"How could I forget? My left eyebrow took months to grow back." Luke shakes his head, saying under his breath (but loud enough she hears every word), "What you can do to food -" His voice trails off as he enters the kitchen where Sookie is banging around, halfway through a good talking to with him.
Lorelai walks to the front door and opens it just a fraction of an inch. Will and Wren are on the front steps, talking, only their profiles visible to her. Suddenly, laughter bursts out of Will at something Wren says, her face screwed up goofily. It's the first time he's laughed like that in months, and it sounds like it, rough, tumbling out of him almost against its will. Sighing, Lorelai leans her forehead against the glass and blinks back tears. She is happy and the warmth spreads out from her chest, oozing into her limbs.
As if they can sense her presence, Wren and Will turn simultaneously and look at the door. Pulling it open wider, Lorelai searches for something to say, feeling guilty for intruding. Then she notices Emma in the front yard, driving erratically, making crazy loops on the grass, the plastic ribbons swirling zanily from the end of each handlebar. She steps out onto the front porch. "Emma Danes, how many times have I told you not to ride your bike on the grass?" she yells.
Emma stops at the sound of her full name and looks at her in confusion. "Never," she informs her, saying the word slowly, eyebrow raised. She looks exactly like her mother.
"Well, if you keep doing it, then this will be the first time of many. So why don't you go ride on the sidewalk instead? Then we can avoid falling into a pattern that will leave us both resentful." Lorelai starts down the steps, past Wren and Will, as Emma reluctantly climbs down from the bike and begins a piteous trudge across the lawn.
-
Wren watches Lorelai and Emma as they walk the bike across the lawn to the sidewalk. Side-by-side, she notices how much Emma takes after Lorelai, both in body and in mannerisms. Wren and her mom were like that. Nana used to tell her she was the very image of Shelby, tipping her head back with her index finger, a proud smile on her grandmother's face. Her mom, laughing, would wrap her up in her long, slender arms (so strong, so safe), calling Wren "my very own mini-me." Sometimes she would stare into the mirror, turning her head this way, that way, trying to see what they saw, but she never did. Her mother was far too beautiful, too exotic, and she always felt ordinary by comparison.
One night, maybe two or three days after the funeral, Wren pulled out the dozens of photo albums stacked up in the den. She used to love them when she was younger, spending hours at a time flipping through their pages, sprawled on the floor. Her parents were always snapping photos, and every time they developed a new roll (neither of them believed in digital), her mother would organize them, meticulously placing them in a photo album. "They're our memories. We may forget them, but every once in we can go back and pull them out - remember," she explained to Wren, brushing her hair from her face.
In the weeks and months after her mom died, Wren would fall asleep looking at picture after picture of her mother. Some, her father took in Venice Beach, her mom proudly baring her full belly for the camera, or the two of them, faces pressed together cheek-to-cheek, both grinning, both young, caught forever in that moment of happiness. One picture stood out from the rest: she and her mom were sitting on the porch swing, both dressed in cutoffs and t-shirts; aside from her mother's nearly black hair, Wren saw it for the first time. The same plump mouth, the same slightly upturned eyes, the same full cheeks; she was her mother's daughter and she felt beautiful, connected to something beyond herself, beyond her mother.
She cried for the first time that night in the den; she cried until her lungs felt like paper. When she woke later, she was in her bed; the albums were stacked along the bottom shelf of her bookcase. Her father sat in a chair in the corner, asleep, head hanging at an awkward angle like he fell asleep watching her. Sitting against her headboard, knees to her chest, she stared at him and saw his grief even as he slept. She climbed down from her bed and gingerly covered him with a blanket. She tucked it under his chin the way her mom would when she put her to bed each night.
Wren glances at Will and finds him watching her. His expression is one of knowing - empathy. "Sorry," she whispers, flushing a little.
"Thinking about your mom?" he asks, clearing his throat. He rubs his eyes and she realizes he is close to crying. She reaches out a hand and slips it into his. She scoots closer, their bodies touching, and nods. "Yeah," she replies simply. "Your grandpa, right?"
"Yeah."
"It's get better," she promises. "It'll never be great, but it gets better."
Will squeezes her hand.
-
Luke stands at the screen door and watches his nephew. Jess sits in one of their deck chairs, staring out into the backyard. Luke is hesitant to intrude because his gaze seems private, lost in old thoughts. It is startling, how much Jess has changed in these years. There is a calmness about him; he is no longer the skittish boy afraid to trust anything or anyone. He likes this new Jess.
"You can come out," Jess calls, turning to look at him.
Caught, Luke steps outside, feeling a little ridiculous for lurking. A breeze blows through, causing goose bumps to rise up on his arms. He'll have to change into a long sleeve shirt before he takes the kids out trick- or-treating tonight. The temperature is already starting to drop, though he doubts it will get down to the predicted forty degrees. After all these years, with all of the available technology, the weather forecasters still can't get it right. He shakes his head as he sits down in the chair beside Jess'. An easy silence falls between them (he missed this about Jess) and Luke enjoys the quiet. Muted by distance, he hears the sound of Lorelai whooping from the front yard, cheering Emma on, then the delicate peals of laughter from his daughter. Watches as Will and Wren come around the house from the front, Will, animated, is telling her about this book he just read. It's the first time in months his house has sounded like this, full of his family's chatter, full of their life.
"It's nice here."
He looks at Jess. "It's home," he replies simply.
"When did you buy this place?"
"Shortly before Emma was born." Luke smiles, remembering. Lorelai and Rory decided they needed to say goodbye to the old place, and planned a sleepover party, which he was forced to attend. Nearly seven months pregnant, Lorelai refused to sleep on anything more than a sleeping bag, then proceeded to whine that she couldn't get comfortable on the floor. Will ended up puking nearly the entire night, having come down with the flu. He woke the next morning with enough cricks in his back and shoulders to remind him of his age. As he tried (in vain) to stretch out his angry back, he found Lorelai in the bathroom, sitting opposite the toilet on the floor, chin on her chest, with Will slumped against her. Rory was curled up on Lorelai's other side, using her mother's thigh as a pillow. All three slept so peacefully, as if they weren't on cold, unforgiving tiles but in the most luxurious of beds.
Glancing at Jess, Luke decides it's time to stop procrastinating. "Jess, if you want, you can take the apartment over the diner," he offers.
Jess turns to him. "Aren't you using it for your office?"
Luke shakes his head. "Lorelai and I share an office here too. I can use it until you find more permanent lodging." He sees Jess' hesitation and he waves it away. "Don't worry about it. With just a little rearranging, it'll look just like you remember it."
Staring at his hands, Jess is quiet for several seconds. "Thanks, Luke," he answers, voice rough. He reaches up and scratches his forehead, uncomfortable. "Luke, uh, I just wanted to apologize for how things ended. How I left." His eyes briefly meet Luke's and he gives a wary, one- shouldered shrug. "I mean, thanks for everything."
"You're family, Jess," Luke replies. You don't turn out family.
-
There used to be certainty in her life. Every Sunday she would wake up to 93.7 (The Arrow - Classic Rock) playing on the stereo downstairs. She would pad on bare feet through the house. In the kitchen, she would prepare her favorite breakfast: a huge bowl of Peanut Butter Crunch, vanilla soymilk lapping at the rim (her mother used to tease, "Want some cereal with your milk?"). She would carry it out onto the back porch where her parents would already be, sitting in the porch swing, her mother's leg thrown over her father's lap, the two of them absorbed in their books. (Her mother liked murder mysteries and what she called "high brow" romance novels, with the occasional classic her father would ask her to read.)
She would sit down at the picnic table. It was the only spot in the backyard where the sun could penetrate the thick overhang of branches. Every so often, she would look up from her own book and watch her parents. Her father loved to play with her mother's hair, twirling its dark length around and around his finger, never once losing his place in his book. The quiet easiness they shared spoke of their years together. Born of fights and laughter and her.
Now she walks this new room, end to end, carefully placing her feet one after the other, heel to toe. It is exactly fifty-two of her feet from one side to the other. Her half is fifty-two of her feet across. Her eyes survey this new place and she misses her old room, misses the memories that lived there. She turns and looks at her father, at the hopeful expression on his face. He doesn't want to disappoint her and she knows most of this is for her. A new start and she feels guilty.
"What do you think, Bird?" he asks. The rest of the family has stayed downstairs to give them privacy.
Smiling, she slides her hands into her back pockets. "It's great, Dad."
He pulls her into a hug. "Thanks," he whispers and she thinks he might know. He releases her from his embrace. "I'm going to get the others," he calls as he heads out the door and she goes to the window, watching the town below.
There used to be certainty in her life. Looking out from her new place in the world, Wren understands with the clarity no ten-year-old should. There is no such thing.
chapter one | chapter two | chapter four | chapter five
chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter nine | chapter ten
AUTHOR:
rubykatewritingPAIRING: This fic features Lorelai and Luke in an established relationship with children; Sookie and Jackson are still doing what they're doing; and Jess is a widower; it will eventually end up Rory/Jess.
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Now he can’t imagine calling any other place home. Jess returns to Stars Hollow.
DISCLAIMER: Luke Danes, Lorelai Gilmore, Jess Mariano, Sookie St. James, Jackson Belleville, Emily and Richard Gilmore and Rory Gilmore belong to others. I am only borrowing them. No harm intended.
WARNING: Major character death pre-fic, which is discussed and dealt with through remainder of fic.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Multiple chapters.
Sookie leans closer to Lorelai. "Please tell me you're as weirded out as I am that Jess has a child just two years younger than mine," she whispers, her gaze locked on the two men.
"Been there since yesterday," Lorelai replies out of the side of her mouth. They watch Luke and Jess as the two men work in near silence on the back porch. They are trying to put together Emma's new bicycle, which has been sitting in a box since her birthday last month. (She didn't want it put together until she learned to ride without training wheels.) Neither one of them gave the directions a glance. They unloaded the box of all its various bicycle parts, stood side-by-side, eyeing the pile for several minutes, then set to work.
Emma sits on one of the kitchen table's chairs, holding her doll in a vise- grip of anticipation, and watches the action, smack in the middle of the doorway. Every once in awhile, when one of the men lets out a choice phrase or word, her eyes grow big and round and she lets out a giggle of appreciation.
Jackson comes rambling in from the front of the house, paper bags full-to- bursting with fresh fruits and vegetables, already telling Sookie about his new crop of something-or-other. He sets the bags down on the kitchen table and Sookie immediately begins unloading them. It's already one o'clock and she doesn't have the chickens in the oven yet. If the kids are going to eat before they go out trick-or-treating, she needs to get moving.
"Jackson, is there anything else in the truck?" Sookie asks, checking each item against the list in her head. Her head pops up from one of the bags, her stomach twisting, and a line forms between her eyebrows as she looks at him. "Where is the squash?"
He straightens at the tone of her voice - normal rising to high right at the end. Trouble is brewing. "They're in there," Jackson replies desperately, pointing at the other bag.
Sookie goes to the other bag, pulling out tomatoes and apples. "No squash. And who put the apples in with the tomatoes?! Hello, people, bruises!" She looks at Jackson like he just kicked her puppy.
He gives her a helpless expression, shoulders raised up. "I wasn't paying attention while the guy bagged. He's new. And I swear I had the squashes in my hand. Hold on, maybe they're out in the truck." He is already halfway to the front door. "They might have fallen out when I took that last turn."
She is fast on his heels. "Jackson, how fast were you driving?" she demands.
Chuckling to herself, Lorelai heads to the living room in search of her son. Will is on the couch, channel surfing, his usual sullen expression in place. He has barely spoken since last night's dinner at her mom's. Emily was in a snit because the maid messed up dinner. When Luke tried to prepare something new, she burst into tears. It was Richard's favorite meal. She wanted it to be perfect. Will watched all of it with his quiet brown eyes, looking up through his messy crop of dark hair. Lorelai sits down beside him and slides an arm around his narrow shoulders. "Hey, kiddo."
"Hey, Mom." He doesn't look away from the TV.
"How about you go outside and see what your cousin Wren is up to?" she suggests.
With a woe-is-me sigh, he reluctantly unfolds his skinny frame from the thick cushions and stands up. His jeans are getting too short again; the hem is barely grazing the top of his sneakers. He walks across the living room to the front door and slips outside, his feet dragging along the wood floor. He knows she hates that.
She sits on the couch, lost in thought. Will may look like Luke, but he has her moody streak. Luke comes into the living room and plops down on the couch beside her, opening a bottle of water. She swings her legs up onto his lap and lies down, resting her head on the armrest. He takes several chugs before he asks, "So?"
Lorelai rolls her eyes in exasperation. "Now I understand when my mom used to tell me I would reap the rewards of my own behavior through my children, three-fold. Or something like that." She lets out a pent-up breath, feeling useless, and covers her face with her arm, her voice muffled. "He won't talk about it. He's said a total of ten words in the past twenty-four hours. I've counted." She looks at him from under her arm. "What are you doing in here? Did you finish Emma's bike?"
"As if your daughter would let us back in the house if we hadn't," he tells her. On cue, Emma taps on the window, sitting on her bike, and waves wildly. Lorelai and Luke wave back. She disappears from view and Luke turns to his wife and studies her in silence. "So what did Mrs. Abernathy have to say?"
"She says he's getting worse. He's keeping his grades up like we told him, but he basically sits in class and reads. No class participation, no interaction with his classmates, even the kids he used to be buddies with." She scoots up into a sitting position, bringing her knees to her chest. "Part of me understands he's still upset about Dad. But it doesn't make it any easier to accept that he's basically throwing away everything he used to love. And he won't talk to me anymore."
Luke smiles, tugging her feet into his lap. "Which is killing you."
"Of course!"
"Babe, it's not just you. It's not just me. It's everyone, including his sisters. He's pissed off at the world and he's taking a page out of his cousin's book. Rebelling. However, as you said, he is keeping his grades up, and he's eating. He can't stay out late or drive yet so let's give him some breathing room."
Lorelai opens her mouth to argue, but Luke stops her. "Babe, he's getting to that age. He's asserting his independence and all that crap. This is probably normal."
"That is so like you to argue rationally with me!" She groans, giving up. "And he's my son. He always promised to remain as un-normal as possible."
Luke scoffs. "I know. I know."
"Hey, Luke?" Sookie calls from the kitchen. "Where did you put the baster? You've moved it!" She sounds incredulous.
Raising his eyebrows suggestively, Luke grins and Lorelai proudly tells him how devious he's become under her expert tutelage. "I can't let her get too cocky in my kitchen," he replies, getting up from the couch, and Lorelai is reminded how much Will moves like him. "You coming?" he asks over his shoulder.
She shakes her head and stands, stretching her back. "You know I've been ordered out of the kitchen since the Christmas '06 fiasco."
"How could I forget? My left eyebrow took months to grow back." Luke shakes his head, saying under his breath (but loud enough she hears every word), "What you can do to food -" His voice trails off as he enters the kitchen where Sookie is banging around, halfway through a good talking to with him.
Lorelai walks to the front door and opens it just a fraction of an inch. Will and Wren are on the front steps, talking, only their profiles visible to her. Suddenly, laughter bursts out of Will at something Wren says, her face screwed up goofily. It's the first time he's laughed like that in months, and it sounds like it, rough, tumbling out of him almost against its will. Sighing, Lorelai leans her forehead against the glass and blinks back tears. She is happy and the warmth spreads out from her chest, oozing into her limbs.
As if they can sense her presence, Wren and Will turn simultaneously and look at the door. Pulling it open wider, Lorelai searches for something to say, feeling guilty for intruding. Then she notices Emma in the front yard, driving erratically, making crazy loops on the grass, the plastic ribbons swirling zanily from the end of each handlebar. She steps out onto the front porch. "Emma Danes, how many times have I told you not to ride your bike on the grass?" she yells.
Emma stops at the sound of her full name and looks at her in confusion. "Never," she informs her, saying the word slowly, eyebrow raised. She looks exactly like her mother.
"Well, if you keep doing it, then this will be the first time of many. So why don't you go ride on the sidewalk instead? Then we can avoid falling into a pattern that will leave us both resentful." Lorelai starts down the steps, past Wren and Will, as Emma reluctantly climbs down from the bike and begins a piteous trudge across the lawn.
-
Wren watches Lorelai and Emma as they walk the bike across the lawn to the sidewalk. Side-by-side, she notices how much Emma takes after Lorelai, both in body and in mannerisms. Wren and her mom were like that. Nana used to tell her she was the very image of Shelby, tipping her head back with her index finger, a proud smile on her grandmother's face. Her mom, laughing, would wrap her up in her long, slender arms (so strong, so safe), calling Wren "my very own mini-me." Sometimes she would stare into the mirror, turning her head this way, that way, trying to see what they saw, but she never did. Her mother was far too beautiful, too exotic, and she always felt ordinary by comparison.
One night, maybe two or three days after the funeral, Wren pulled out the dozens of photo albums stacked up in the den. She used to love them when she was younger, spending hours at a time flipping through their pages, sprawled on the floor. Her parents were always snapping photos, and every time they developed a new roll (neither of them believed in digital), her mother would organize them, meticulously placing them in a photo album. "They're our memories. We may forget them, but every once in we can go back and pull them out - remember," she explained to Wren, brushing her hair from her face.
In the weeks and months after her mom died, Wren would fall asleep looking at picture after picture of her mother. Some, her father took in Venice Beach, her mom proudly baring her full belly for the camera, or the two of them, faces pressed together cheek-to-cheek, both grinning, both young, caught forever in that moment of happiness. One picture stood out from the rest: she and her mom were sitting on the porch swing, both dressed in cutoffs and t-shirts; aside from her mother's nearly black hair, Wren saw it for the first time. The same plump mouth, the same slightly upturned eyes, the same full cheeks; she was her mother's daughter and she felt beautiful, connected to something beyond herself, beyond her mother.
She cried for the first time that night in the den; she cried until her lungs felt like paper. When she woke later, she was in her bed; the albums were stacked along the bottom shelf of her bookcase. Her father sat in a chair in the corner, asleep, head hanging at an awkward angle like he fell asleep watching her. Sitting against her headboard, knees to her chest, she stared at him and saw his grief even as he slept. She climbed down from her bed and gingerly covered him with a blanket. She tucked it under his chin the way her mom would when she put her to bed each night.
Wren glances at Will and finds him watching her. His expression is one of knowing - empathy. "Sorry," she whispers, flushing a little.
"Thinking about your mom?" he asks, clearing his throat. He rubs his eyes and she realizes he is close to crying. She reaches out a hand and slips it into his. She scoots closer, their bodies touching, and nods. "Yeah," she replies simply. "Your grandpa, right?"
"Yeah."
"It's get better," she promises. "It'll never be great, but it gets better."
Will squeezes her hand.
-
Luke stands at the screen door and watches his nephew. Jess sits in one of their deck chairs, staring out into the backyard. Luke is hesitant to intrude because his gaze seems private, lost in old thoughts. It is startling, how much Jess has changed in these years. There is a calmness about him; he is no longer the skittish boy afraid to trust anything or anyone. He likes this new Jess.
"You can come out," Jess calls, turning to look at him.
Caught, Luke steps outside, feeling a little ridiculous for lurking. A breeze blows through, causing goose bumps to rise up on his arms. He'll have to change into a long sleeve shirt before he takes the kids out trick- or-treating tonight. The temperature is already starting to drop, though he doubts it will get down to the predicted forty degrees. After all these years, with all of the available technology, the weather forecasters still can't get it right. He shakes his head as he sits down in the chair beside Jess'. An easy silence falls between them (he missed this about Jess) and Luke enjoys the quiet. Muted by distance, he hears the sound of Lorelai whooping from the front yard, cheering Emma on, then the delicate peals of laughter from his daughter. Watches as Will and Wren come around the house from the front, Will, animated, is telling her about this book he just read. It's the first time in months his house has sounded like this, full of his family's chatter, full of their life.
"It's nice here."
He looks at Jess. "It's home," he replies simply.
"When did you buy this place?"
"Shortly before Emma was born." Luke smiles, remembering. Lorelai and Rory decided they needed to say goodbye to the old place, and planned a sleepover party, which he was forced to attend. Nearly seven months pregnant, Lorelai refused to sleep on anything more than a sleeping bag, then proceeded to whine that she couldn't get comfortable on the floor. Will ended up puking nearly the entire night, having come down with the flu. He woke the next morning with enough cricks in his back and shoulders to remind him of his age. As he tried (in vain) to stretch out his angry back, he found Lorelai in the bathroom, sitting opposite the toilet on the floor, chin on her chest, with Will slumped against her. Rory was curled up on Lorelai's other side, using her mother's thigh as a pillow. All three slept so peacefully, as if they weren't on cold, unforgiving tiles but in the most luxurious of beds.
Glancing at Jess, Luke decides it's time to stop procrastinating. "Jess, if you want, you can take the apartment over the diner," he offers.
Jess turns to him. "Aren't you using it for your office?"
Luke shakes his head. "Lorelai and I share an office here too. I can use it until you find more permanent lodging." He sees Jess' hesitation and he waves it away. "Don't worry about it. With just a little rearranging, it'll look just like you remember it."
Staring at his hands, Jess is quiet for several seconds. "Thanks, Luke," he answers, voice rough. He reaches up and scratches his forehead, uncomfortable. "Luke, uh, I just wanted to apologize for how things ended. How I left." His eyes briefly meet Luke's and he gives a wary, one- shouldered shrug. "I mean, thanks for everything."
"You're family, Jess," Luke replies. You don't turn out family.
-
There used to be certainty in her life. Every Sunday she would wake up to 93.7 (The Arrow - Classic Rock) playing on the stereo downstairs. She would pad on bare feet through the house. In the kitchen, she would prepare her favorite breakfast: a huge bowl of Peanut Butter Crunch, vanilla soymilk lapping at the rim (her mother used to tease, "Want some cereal with your milk?"). She would carry it out onto the back porch where her parents would already be, sitting in the porch swing, her mother's leg thrown over her father's lap, the two of them absorbed in their books. (Her mother liked murder mysteries and what she called "high brow" romance novels, with the occasional classic her father would ask her to read.)
She would sit down at the picnic table. It was the only spot in the backyard where the sun could penetrate the thick overhang of branches. Every so often, she would look up from her own book and watch her parents. Her father loved to play with her mother's hair, twirling its dark length around and around his finger, never once losing his place in his book. The quiet easiness they shared spoke of their years together. Born of fights and laughter and her.
Now she walks this new room, end to end, carefully placing her feet one after the other, heel to toe. It is exactly fifty-two of her feet from one side to the other. Her half is fifty-two of her feet across. Her eyes survey this new place and she misses her old room, misses the memories that lived there. She turns and looks at her father, at the hopeful expression on his face. He doesn't want to disappoint her and she knows most of this is for her. A new start and she feels guilty.
"What do you think, Bird?" he asks. The rest of the family has stayed downstairs to give them privacy.
Smiling, she slides her hands into her back pockets. "It's great, Dad."
He pulls her into a hug. "Thanks," he whispers and she thinks he might know. He releases her from his embrace. "I'm going to get the others," he calls as he heads out the door and she goes to the window, watching the town below.
There used to be certainty in her life. Looking out from her new place in the world, Wren understands with the clarity no ten-year-old should. There is no such thing.
chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter nine | chapter ten
